Shmooozing

Not really directly SEO related, but I have been going to lots of conference parties of late, and it is quite interesting to view the social interactions that occur. Some people are really good at schmoozing, while others are average, and some linger in a corner hoping nobody will talk to them. Friends = recommendations = links. I still wouldn't describe myself as being a great schmoozer, but I know lots of people who are, and I think the most common traits of people who are successful at talking to and meeting new people are:

  • they are confident and comfortable with their identity and state of being

  • they are not afraid of being rejected or trying new things
  • they make it easy for others to laugh, and also laugh at themselves
  • they make eye contact and mirror body language
  • they tend to largely focus conversations on the interests of the people they are talking to
  • they can anticipate conversations, but do not skip ahead of those they are around
  • they tend to make the people they are talking to feel comfortable with their identity, and important for being a great person or doing a great job at what they do

The more you know about a person than what an average person off the street would know about them the more likely they are to find you interesting.

I think the feeling of love is when other people feel more complete, happy, or as a better person when they are around you. If you can do things which create those sorts of feelings in other people then they will reciprocate, and (link) love is all you need. :)

For consultants SEO is probably more about sociology, psychology, and healthy social relationships than algorithms.

What good schmoozer traits did I miss?

Inside the Mind of a Searcher: Free Keyword Research Search Data

AOL proved stupid by potentially violating the privacy of 650,000 searchers and the 20 million searches they did over a 3 month period earlier this year. While seasonal and limited to AOL data, this ties data together between searcher and search patterns as well as searches and relevant sites.

Imagine combining Alexa, Hitwise, and Wordtracker, and making it all free :)

The original data source has been pulled, but mirrors are up.

Awesome Company Blogs

SEOMoz ... obviously most everyone here probably already reads that, but I like the mixed personalities of the various authors of their blog (other than MM), and it was fun hanging out with everyone from there tonight :)

Dreamhost...what other company of that scale (other than Victoria's Secret, Hanes, or Fruit of the Loom) can get away with showing underwear on their site, or attack a perceived weakness and describe it in a way that makes you want to trust them and buy more? And how quality are the pics in this post?

Silent Bob Speaks...a bit crass for some no doubt, but that is clearly part of the appeal.

I recently have been given about 1/2 dozen books on blogging. I hope and mean to read some of them soon.

The Myth of a Perfectly Optimized Page

I frequently get asked to look at a page to see if I think it is perfectly optimized. But I rarely think you can tell if a page is perfectly optimized just by looking at one page. Most of the optimized pages I am asked to look at have no clear goal at hand. Is the page meant to be link bait? Am I supposed to buy from the page? How is the page integrated into your site? How do people find this page? What sort of brand equity have you built up?

No matter what you are doing you are always Electioneering. Does your site sell ad space? Are you trying to manipulate public opinion? In many ways just having open access to people who are willing to answer your questions is highly valuable even if that is the only aim of a page.

The key to doing well is to gain enough authority and mindshare to be in a self reinforcing market position or to have enough momentum to be able to jump from field to field. Examples:

  • What is Home Depot? A retailer? Or a large home improvement ad network? They are willing to test adding ads to their site, which may allow them to leverage their brand for high margin revenue streams and discover new products and new markets while competing retail only stores are forced to close due to shrinking margins (I just tried shopping at the local Lowes but they closed down).

  • The Wall Street Journal is going to sell front page ads.
  • Some newspaper websites include syndicated links from blogs. Recently some newspaper publishers have even decided to add links to competing content near their stories.
  • Ken McCarthy has been an internet marketer longer than I have known what the internet is about. He recently asked on his blog what Google did with their recent AdWords update. He must have got fifty to a hundred responses.

The issue with just looking at "is this page optimized" is that all markets are heavily manipulated and search frequently changes. If you just maximize one portion of your optimization process without considering the social aspects of the web, short and long term goals, or how your site fits into the web as a whole then when one of the market makers changes the rules you are relegated to leaving whiny comments about how that market maker is evil.

One of the reasons I never published SEO Book in print format is that my self image is quite low, and I never think what I do is good enough (I realize I should not have wrote that). But as time has passed I came to appreciate that the whole concept of optimization really is about predicting market changes and getting the most of the current market as you can. Any sort of optimization has associated opportunity costs and is only effective for a certain window of time. What was perfect optimization a year or two ago is now largely inefficient and ineffective as some of the market makers have closed some of their algorithmic holes.

Long term optimization would be "create high quality content that users like that would make a search engine inadequate if it was not ranked." But when you are starting from nothing, sometimes it helps to take advantage of a few market inefficiencies to help build the exposure necessary to build a self reinforcing position which may allow you to jump from field to field.

And the web is such a social medium that it requires understanding people far more than algorithms. At least for most businesses. And human nature changes much slower than the web and search algorithms do. But you can't understand how well a person speaks to / with their audience just by looking at one web page.

I might have a kick ass copywriter edit my sales letter to improve its conversion rate. I am not afraid of paying him to write it, but my biggest fear with optimizing it is that if I push conversion too much, then what will that do to the consistency of my voice across my site?

Central Banks & Money Market Manipulation

Update: After reading Alan Greenspan's book I realize that not all central bankers are bad, but I still believe there are a lot of dirty people in international banking.

Even markets that seem like they should be somewhat honest and forthright are not. Consider the Federal Reserve - a deceptively named private bank which holds a monopoly over currency supplies in spite of likely having no actual reserves. All the evils of a corporation heavily exist in a privatized for profit central bank. Some of the past US central bankers, seeking to keep their power, have stated things like:

Nothing but widespread suffering will produce any effect on the congress...Our only safety is pursuing a course of steady restriction - and I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and a recharter of the bank. - Nicholas Biddle.

Shortly after Nicholas plunged the US economy into a deep depression he was caught making comments like the above in public. Back then the media was far more honest (ie: less sold out and owned by bankers) than the current media, and Andrew Jackson won enough support to pay off the bank and prevent it from being rechartered. Shortly afterward there was an assassination attempt on Jackson's life. The assassin bragged that rich bankers from Europe put him up to the test and promised to protect him if he were caught.

After President Garfield spoke out against private bankers he was assassinated.

The civil war may have also been largely caused by powerful bankers from Europe. Slavery was not a major issue prior to the war according to Lincoln. Lincoln, who opposed a privately owned central bank, was assassinated only 5 days after Lee surrendered to Grant.

After the civil war the US was quite prosperous, but powerful bankers pushed congress to contract the money supply
1866 - 1.8 billion in circulation - $50.46 per capita
1867 - 1.3 - $44
1876 - 0.6 - $14.6
1886 - 0.4 - $6.67

The tightening of the money supply caused deep depression.

Through cycling interest rates and money supplies central banks can create false markets then extract the profit from the work of others when they re-tighten the monetary supply. The boom bust business cycle is used for central banks to exploit profits from citizens and companies alike. The bankers in the Federal Reserve more-less have insider info on how to bet for or against sectors of the economy (on top of having a 100% profit margin plus interest on the central bank credits to the government).

The Federal Reserve pays for government bonds by the issuance of electronic credits based literally on nothing. How pathetically inept is the US government to allow an arbitrary 3rd party to have 100% + profit margins on creating the currency needed to run that government?

England was at war for 56 of the first 119 years after the bank of England was created. Many banks finance both sides of a war. Many times the loans are placed with the guarantee that the winner will pay the debts of the loser.

Nathan Rothschild had started selling English stocks and bonds after the defeat of Napoleon to misdirect the market while he secretly started buying assets at a fraction of the price. As Napoleon Bonaparte stated:

The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency: their sole object is gain.

Ernest Seyd admitted that in 1872 he was set to bribe US congressmen to demonetize silver. By 1873 gold was the only accepted form of coin money in the US. Since gold was quite scarce and monopolized, putting America on the gold standard allowed the owners of gold to manipulate the markets.

In 1933 private ownership of gold in the US was confiscated by the government (for the price of $20.66 an ounce). After most gold was turned in the price per ounce was raised to $35, but only foreigners could sell gold at the new higher price. Then over the years gold was likely smuggled out of Fort Knox to wealthy foreigners associated with international bankers at cheap prices. In 1982 Regan commissioned a group to study the feasibility of going back to a gold standard. They reported that the US treasury had no gold at the time. This is a perfect example of why true patriots chose to fight or ignore bad laws.

In 1891 the American Bankers Associate sent out a memo stating that on September 1st 1894 they would cause a deep depression to seize assets at pennies on the dollars. And it happened.

There has been a nongovernment ran US central bank at least 4 times. In 1913 the current one was put in place. WWI occurred a year after the federal reserve was created. Within the first 25 years of its existence the Federal Reserve caused 3 major economic downturns, including the great depression.

In April of 1929, Paul Warburg, the father of the Federal Reserve, sent out a secret memo to friends stating that "a collapse and nationwide depression was certain." In August of 29 the fed began to tighten money. Rockefeller, JP Morgan, and others just happened to be lucky in getting out of the stock market in 1929. On October 24th, 1929 big New York bankers called in their 24 hour broker call loans. That day was known as black Thursday.

After the crash, instead of lowering interest rates the fed continued to contract the money supply by 1/3 from 1929 to 1933. While America was suffering in depression 10s of billions of US dollars were sucked out of the US economy to prop up Germany (which had assets largely owned by international bankers that bought them for next to nothing after WWI).

All the above obvious market manipulation shows that privately owned central banks do not breed any sort of stability (and in fact just the opposite), which shows just how useless they are.

Money is not a finite commodity but a means to barter. Since I was a little kid I went back to the town that I grew up in and noticed so many payday loan stores that never existed when I was a kid. Why are all of these scammy loan businesses popping up?

If you want to learn more about the economic fraud that is the Federal Reserve (and if the 16th amendment may even be illegal) check out The Money Masters - where many of the above points came from - (also on Google Video here and here).

The US is now in a persistent war that will most likely only end when economic incentive for it goes away or the public cares enough to force the powers that be to end it.

How pathetically inept is the US government to allow an arbitrary 3rd party to have 100% + profit margins on creating the currency needed to run that government? Why are so many countries and individuals living in a state of persistent debt to arbitrary sources when money is not a finite commodity but just a means for barter? Money is usually created from nothing and based on nothing by arbitrary for profit companies.

Shouldn't the debt of most men be to their children more than to a few opulent sleazeballs who arbitrarily inherited a large portion of the world's wealth based on voodoo economics?

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild

This is probably quite an absurd post for an SEO blog, but it is just a reminder that markets can sway at any given time, and even allegedly valuable and trustworthy standards of value are heavily manipulated and can erode quickly. Smart business owners make their businesses fluid enough to be able to ebb and flow with large powerful market forces.

Solutions Looking for a Problem...

Introducing SEM Financing.com.

Google AdWords doesn't even charge you until after people click your ads. Payday loans are for people who can't manage their finances. Why would a company that was successful at direct marketing need such a month to month loan service? Who would use that?

Spare Parts Save Lives (and Businesses)

I used to work on a submarine, and one of the biggest design criteria for the sub was redundancy. Many businesses fail because they bank on one channel working forever. That is rarely the case.

Patrick Gavin recently offered an insightful post about keeping a spare website or two just in case an algorithm update whacks your site.

Mo Money Keyword Brands

Branded traffic is worth big bank.

If you rank for a business name in a good niche ~ it can pay dividends, especially as the business markets its brand, I am not talking large corps here but I have maybe 5 websites that I tested that rank either 1 or generally 2 for the business names and they pay large, when these businesses advertise and push their brand ~ kerching!

Exact match keyword domains work well in Google when combined with a few high quality links, and most branded keywords actually are not that hard to rank for.

All Packaged Information is Garbage

or at least most people in this thread think so. But then in other forum threads I have been referred to as a genius. I am glad someone believes in me more than I do ;)

If you find a good book (like A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History) sometimes you are not paying for what is in the book, but also what biases or other information are not included in the book (as any author, business model, or information format carries biases).

I think one of the biggest reasons many people fail is they try to satisfy everyone. Average people suck. Experience is the best trainer, but people discounting the value of other things typically tend to start from the framework of thinking their time is worthless. And so it is. Everything is overpriced. Until you die.

Matt Cutts SEO FAQ Videos

Most readers of this site probably read MattCutts.com, but if you do not, he recently created 8 videos answering common SEO questions. I added links to them on my SEO video page. Rebecca wrote textual reviews of them here, here, and here.

Pages